Assessment of Functionality of Multifunction Prosthetic Hands

Introduction: This study is part of a program to investigate the function of prosthetic arm systems, specifically the new generation multifunction hands. Materials and Methods: The Southampton Hand Assessment Procedure was used tomeasure the relative performance of a range of commercial multifunction prosthetic hands. To compare different designs of hands, a single subject was used with repeated measures. Hands from Touch Bionics (i-limb), Steeper (BeBionic), and Ottobock (Michelangelo) were tested and compared with the most effective single degree of freedom hand (Motion Control), as measured in a previous study. Results: The overall performance of the Motion Control hand (94) was a significantly higher score than the Ottobock (89) (P > 0.05); the other two hands also had lower Overall scores (Touch Bionics, 81; Steeper, 83). When the individual grip scores are normalized against the Overall score, the Tips grips for all hands showed a much poorer value than the other grips (Steeper, 0.77; Touch Bionics, 0.73; and Ottobock, 0.82). Conclusions: All three hands were more anthropomorphic in action and appearance than the earlier hands, but this did not result in greater function than the simpler fixed geometry hands.